The English guitar or guittar (also citra), is a

stringed instrument String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the st ...

– a type of

cittern The cittern or cithren ( Fr. ''cistre'', It. ''cetra'', Ger. ''Cister,'' Sp. ''cistro, cedra, cítola'') is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is d ...

– popular in many places in Europe from around 1750–1850. It is unknown when the identifier "English" became connected to the instrument: at the time of its introduction to Great Britain, and during its period of popularity, it was apparently simply known as ''guitar'' or ''guittar''. The instrument was also known in Norway as a ''guitarre'' and France as ''cistre'' or ''guitarre allemande'' (German guitar). There are many examples in Norwegian museums, like the

Norsk Folkemuseum Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Museum of Cultural History), at Bygdøy, Oslo, Norway, is a museum of cultural history with extensive collections of artifacts from all social groups and all regions of the country. It also incorporates a large open- ...

and in British ones, including the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. The English guitar has a pear-shaped body, a flat base, and a short neck. The instrument is also related to the

Portuguese guitar The Portuguese guitar or Portuguese guitarra ( pt, guitarra portuguesa, ) is a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. It is one of the few musical instruments that still uses watch-key or Presto ...

and the German

waldzither The waldzither (german: "forest zither") is a plucked string instrument from Germany that came up around 1900 in Thuringia. It is a type of cittern that has nine steel strings in five courses. Different types of waldzither come in different tuni ...

. Early examples had

tuning peg A variety of methods are used to tune different stringed instruments. Most change the pitch produced when the string is played by adjusting the tension of the strings. A tuning peg in a pegbox is perhaps the most common system. A peg has a ...

s (similar to a violin or lute), but many museum examples have what are commonly referred to now as

Preston tuners Preston tuners or machines (also known as peacock, fan, or watchkey tuners) is a type of machine head tuning system for string instruments, named for English cittern ( English guitar) maker John Preston and developed in the 18th century. -- ''the ...

, an innovation that appears closely linked with the instrument. In the 1760s J.N. Preston of London invented watch-key tuning, which was better suited to the instrument’s short metal strings than the original peg tuning. Dublin-made instruments of the 1760s often use the worm-gear tuning later adopted by the Spanish guitar. The English guitar's popularity reflected the desire of the wealthy class to play a simple musical instrument. Burney recounted (in ‘Guitarra’, Rees's Cyclopaedia, 1802–19) how its vogue about 1765 was so great among all ranks of people as nearly to ruin the harpsichord makers; but Jacob Kirkman retrieved the situation by giving cheap guitars to milliner girls and street ballad singers, thereby shaming the richer ladies into returning to the harpsichord.

Keyed English Guitar

This instrument helped those that found it hard to acquire the right-hand technique, during the 1770s a certain Smith patented a key-box housing six keys similar to those of a piano, which when depressed caused leather-covered hammers to strike down onto the strings. In 1783 Christian Claus of London patented a more sophisticated ‘keyed guitar’, whose mechanism was housed inside the sound box instead of being poised above the strings; the hammers struck upwards through holes in the soundhole rose. This type of instrument was called a ‘piano forte guitar’ by Longman & Broderip in 1787.

Tuning

It usually had ten strings in a repetitive

open C tuning Open C tuning is an open tuning for guitar. The open-string notes form a C major chord, which is the triad (C,E,G) having the root note C, the major third (C,E), and the perfect fifth (C,G). When the guitar is strummed without fretting any s ...

, of which the highest eight are paired in four courses (doubled strings), :C E GG cc ee gg in Helmholtz notation. The English guitar may have influenced the development and tuning of the

Russian guitar The Russian guitar (sometimes referred to as a "Gypsy guitar") is an acoustic seven-string guitar that was developed in Russia toward the end of the 18th century: it shares most of its organological features with the Spanish guitar, although som ...

, which has seven strings tuned to

open G Among alternative tunings for the guitar, an open G tuning is an open tuning that features the G-major chord; its open notes are selected from the notes of a G-major chord, such as the G-major triad (G,B,D). For example, a popular open-G tuning ...

third Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * Second#Sexagesimal divisions of calendar time and day, 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (d ...

s (G–B, B–D, g–b, and b–d) with two in fourths (D–G, and D–g): :D, G, B, D, g, b, d. File:Joseph Wright - Mrs. Robert Gwillym.jpg, 1766, England.''Mrs. Robert Gwillym'' playing an English guitar, painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. File:Sir Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of Mrs. Froude.jpg, 1762, England. Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Mrs. Froude playing an English guitar or cittern.

References

{{Lute Repetitive guitar-tunings Non-Spanish classical guitars

Keyed English Guitar

Tuning

See also

References